it’s u-pick your fruit season!

picking fruit

Over the weekend we went to a local orchard to pick raspberries and apples. It was a beautiful day: warm and sunny, but not hot — breezy, but not windy. Autumn is definitely in the air.

picking fruit

First up were the raspberries. They aren’t supposed to reach their peak ripeness until later this week, so we had to hunt for good ones. I think we did pretty good.

picking fruit

My daughter enjoyed picking them until she began to notice Bees! and long grass Scratching Her Legs! In her defense, she doesn’t really like the seedy texture of raspberries, so this was a lot of work for something she wouldn’t eat.

picking fruit

After the berries, we headed over to the apples. Galas are our favorite and they just happened to be the ones ready for picking. Our daughter was much happier once she got her hands on a juicy, sweet treat.

picking fruit

It was hard to resist some of the other trees that were full of unripe fruit. We couldn’t believe they weren’t ready and threw a few into our bag anyway. Woah, were they tart! Lesson learned.

picking fruit

I plan to make some freezer jam with the raspberries. The apples will disappear fast around here, but I hope to at least get one pie made and maybe an apple crisp, too. On our way out we talked about a return trip later in the season, maybe when the pumpkins are ready.

for the locals:
We went to Martin’s Hillside Orchard. I follow their updates on facebook. A list of local orchards can be found here.

taking the next step

I’ve been thinking a lot about my little space on the Internet. A few years ago I spun my creative work off of my personal blog because they felt like two separate parts of me. Now they couldn’t be more intertwined.

This space isn’t going away. In fact, it will probably grow to include more aspects of my creative life. I don’t want it to become too cumbersome, but I need a place to document more of the whole me.

I wrote that back in June. Since then, I’ve been reading through my personal archives and realized there’s a lot of really great creative stuff over there.

I’ve decided to merge the two blogs back together. I plan on doing it chronologically, so you probably won’t notice. I thought you might want to take a look around before everything is whooshed over here.

I’m also planning to redesign this site. I’d love to have a menu at the top for different categories. My tutorial and pattern lists could use some organization and I’d like to share more photography and creative writing. The personal archives will be coming over, too. They are a huge part of me and I just can’t delete them.

Finally, I’d like to take a moment and thank you, dear readers, for visiting and commenting on what I’m doing. During the days/weeks/months where I thought I’d never be able to keep up my creativity, taking time to document things here has made such an impact. It may not have been much sometimes, but I never stopped making things.

Many of you have told me that I’ve inspired you to keep making things, too. Let’s promise to carve out a little bit of time everyday for our creative spirits, even if it’s only for five minutes. Reading through my archives made me realize those minutes really add up!

Let me know if there are any changes you’d like to see as I (slowly) rearrange the furniture around here.